Jeopardy had a fairly easy category on football last night. The team Tom Landry coached for. What a kick returner signals for to catch the ball without getting tackled. The term for simultaneous penalties by the offense and the defense that cancel each other out. The name of the play where the QB can choose to run or toss the ball to a RB. The toughest question was the nickname of the Vikings' defensive line in the '70s. Even a casual fan should have gotten most of the questions. But the three contestants -- one in his 20s and the other two probably 30ish -- DIDN'T EVEN OFFER A GUESS ON ANY OF THEM.

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/02/...

So does this mean that football is on the way out?

This is like asking if 18th century authors are on the rise after contestants sweep the category.

"I'll take Anal Bum Cover for $200 Alex"

"That's An Album Cover."

Lol...thank you.

I mean, Alex Trebeck was pretty openly mocking them by the time they got to the end of the category, so I wouldn't feel too bad about laughing AT them

True, but that little kindergartener that's won the last several games can laugh all the way to the bank.

While that's no doubt true, and its also true that the option is not as popular as it once was, you could hardly watch a game without seeing a fair catch, and quite likely would see a situation with offsetting penalties. This is just one more piece of evidence that football is declining in popularity. It goes hand in hand with the data someone posted awhile back showing viewer ages skewing older at a rapid rate in almost every sport.

If young people today spend all there time playing video games, will they watch Twitch instead of ESPN?

Interesting chart. I thought this descriptive sentence the most interesting of all: "[The data showed] that while the median age of viewers of most sports, except the WTA, NBA and MLS, is aging faster than the overall U.S. population, it is doing so at a slower pace than prime-time TV." I think the trend away from prime-time TV is a long-term phenomenon and not just a temporary blip. The cut-the-cord movement and the ability via various internet services to have entertainment-on-demand I think will eventually be the death knell of TV and cable as we know it.

I could be wrong; I've made incorrect predictions based on trend data before. When I was in my 20s there was a lot of data indicating that my generation was not drinking coffee like their parents. Coffee sales began to fall off dramatically. There were many articles noting this fact. As a result, I predicted the slow demise of the coffee industry. WRONG!

About this same time there was a big fall off in movie theatre attendance. This was attributed to TV. As a result, I predicted that within a decade or two there would be no more movie theaters. Everyone would just watch TV shows and the occasional made-for-TV movie. WRONG AGAIN!

So, be skeptical of trying to project current societal trends into the future. Predictions based on them may or may not prove to be true.

LOL, throughout history, people like watching violent behavior. Look at the popularity of MMA and other savage sports. In America, the NFL and NCAA are money making machines. These are toned-down ways to show collisions, brutality, and the physical dominance of 1 NFL city or university over the other. People don't realize how caught up in this system we really are, like it or not. It's the way it is. Football isn't going ANYWHERE.

These are probably all the same reasons the Boy Scouts are experiencing declining numbers.

I personally think that this is not a bad idea. Many kids at these young ages are not physically developed enough to play football with the intensity of some of these programs. A little touch football in the sandlot is one thing, but full-pad tackle football is just too much, too early IMHO.

When I was kid,youth football didn't exist.
We just played "two hand touch".

When they started the youth football programs around here,most of the coaches didn't play Varsity football in high school,let alone play at any level in college.

That turned me off to the whole youth tackle football scene.

Let kids start playing tackle in high school.

+1